Main menu

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Post navigation

Mormon Pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847, and immediately began planting and irrigating. Under direction of the church organization, the settlers cooperated to tame the land and its natural resources. At this time, present-day Utah was in Mexican territory.

By 1850, the outlying regions of Bountiful, Farmington, Ogden, Tooele, Provo, and Manti were settled.

Two kinds of colonizing efforts took place: directed settlements and undirected settlements. In directed settlements, colonies were planned, organized, and dispatched by the Church. Companies were appointed and equipped to explore the area, people were appointed to colonize it, and a leader was appointed. The Church gave instructions on the mission of the colony, whether to raise crops, assist Indians, mine coal, or serve as a way station for groups on the trail to California.

Non-directed settlements were founded by individuals, families, and neighborhood groups without direction from the Church. Most of the Wasatch Front communities were non-directed. Although Church leaders did not commission these settlements, they encouraged them, and quickly established wards when the population was great enough to justify them.

When the Mexican War ended in February 1848, the land became part of the United States. The Mormons proposed creating the State of Deseret, but Congress would not admit them to the Union. Instead, the federal government created the Territory of Utah, with Brigham Young as the first territorial governor.

In 1857, President James Buchanan sent a military force to Utah based on false reports of a Mormon rebellion against federal authority. The Utah Expedition was led by General Albert Sidney Johnston. This was part of a conflict known as the Utah War, which ended with only limited bloodshed.

More than 60,000 Mormons had come to the territory by the time the first transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory, Utah in May of 1869.

After the Church announced the abandonment of polygamy in 1890, Congress finally granted statehood to the people of Utah on January 4, 1896.

Sources

Brief History of Utah, Utah History to Go, by Ron Rood and Linda ThatcherHistory, by S. George EllsworthColonization of Utah, Utah History Encyclopedia, by Leonard J. Arrington

In making policy, it seems that sometimes the possibility of unintended consequences is not considered. Unfortunately, whether by oversight or some other force, policies get created which create perverse incentives. Our complicated tax law has got people doing all kinds of unproductive things in order to get around paying taxes. In our welfare programs, we have some systems in place which actually make or keep people impoverished.

For example, consider a program which provides health insurance for families below the poverty line. For a family of four, this would be an income of $21,200 annually. If a job offer were extended to the father of this family for $30,000 per year, without health insurance, should he take it? It appears so, but actually, he might be worse off. If the health care benefit he is receiving is worth $12,100 per year (the average annual premium for an employer health plan covering a family of four), then in the first case, he is making practically $33,300; in the second case, he is only getting $17,900. The perverse incentive is for him to stay below the poverty line by staying underemployed.

What do you get when you extend welfare benefits to unwed mothers? Why, more unwed mothers, of course. This, in turn, creates more poverty. I’m sure the designers of our welfare programs did not intend to make more people impoverished. The fact is, when you pay for something, you get more of it.

The No Child Left Behind Act seems like a good idea, right? I mean, nobody wants to leave a child behind. The Act requires that schools show improvement in student test scores. This provides an incentive for the school to encourage low-performing students to drop out before they take the test. Oops.

Or, consider the various Digital Rights Management schemes which make it harder to copy and access music, movies, or video games. It seems like a good idea, right? But there are some fair uses of copyrighted material which DRM prevents, like saving your movies to your computer’s hard drive so you can watch them without having to bother with the discs. Since pirated content doesn’t have these restrictions, it creates a perverse incentive for people to pirate content instead of buying it, which is exactly the opposite of what the designers intended.

Instead of blindly reforming, we need to carefully consider all the implications of a policy before implementing it. There is an ecological balance, and if you adjust one side of the equation, you’ve got to deal with the other side, too.

Hi, it’s been a while since I’ve written — I sure have been busy! Back in April, my wife and I gave birth to our first child, a son, whom we have named Daniel. You can see some pictures of him at daniel.kevinowens.org. Isn’t he just the most adorable little creature you have ever seen?

SnapFiles has a great list of freeware games for your Pocket PC available for download. Old classics include Othello, Chess, Pinball, and Tetris; it also includes some new inventive titles such as Christmas Rush and Warring States.

Check it out for yourself, and download some free games, at SnapFiles.

6.Take attendance16.Keep an inventory of books and other instructional materials45.Record voice notes61.Gather data on temperature, light, voltage, pH, and more with data probes93.Build a robot controlled by a handheld device

Check out the link if you want to find out even more ways to effectively use handheld technology in education.

Rich Hall over at Pocket PC Magazine has written a great article which gets right down to the question, What is Windows Mobile? It’s a great article for any of you who want a good introduction to all this. Link: What is Windows Mobile?

Innobec has created some software that will let you use your Pocket PC as a touch-screen extension of your computer desktop. In their own words, “The expensive desk ornament that used to be your cradled PDA can now serve a useful purpose.” Read more about it at Innobec’s website.